A Town Called Gale

If your child had killed another child, your family would be relocated to Gale, to start a new life under an assumed name.

There were no Holiday Inns in Gale. Tourism was not merely discouraged, it was disallowed. A visitor stopping at the town’s filling station would be subtly encouraged to drive on.

Of course, nobody from the outside world knew the secret of Gale. Nobody knew but the parents and children who lived there.

I remember thinking “murderess” was unnecessarily sex-specific and overly harsh. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe your kid hadn’t meant to push that other kid. Maybe she’d meant to push but not to kill. Maybe she had no idea what kill even meant.

Hopefully you had more than one kid. That way nobody would be sure which was the murderer.

The parents of the town accepted each other and each other’s families because everyone shared the same tragedy. But there was never trust.

The town had a library, but no newspaper collection. Internet use was monitored to prevent the curious from learning specifics about each other’s crimes.

As they grew up, the children were encouraged to date each other, to marry, to stay in the town.